Hubble Pinpoints Farthest Protocluster of Galaxies Ever Seen

January 10, 2012: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a cluster of galaxies in the initial
stages of construction — the most distant such grouping ever observed in the
early universe.

In a random sky survey made in near-infrared light, Hubble spied five tiny
galaxies clustered together 13.1 billion light-years away. They are among the
brightest galaxies at that epoch and very young, existing just 600 million
years after the universe's birth in the big bang.